1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a multilayer ceramic capacitor.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, with the reduction in size and height for electronic devices such as cellular phones and portable music players, multilayer printed wiring boards mounted on the electronic devices have been progressively reduced in size. Accordingly, multilayer ceramic capacitors mounted on the multilayer printed wiring boards have been also progressively reduced in size and height.
Some of the multilayer ceramic capacitors are built into multilayer printed wiring boards, such as the multilayer ceramic capacitor described in, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-203735. In the case of building the multilayer ceramic capacitor into Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-203735, there is a need to irradiate external electrodes of the multilayer ceramic capacitor with a laser to form opening for via holes in order to electrically connect the capacitor to the multilayer printed wiring board.
However, the external electrodes preferably have laser resistance in the case of irradiating the external electrodes of the multilayer ceramic capacitor with a laser in order to form the openings for via holes. This is because the external electrodes may be damaged unless the electrodes have laser resistance.
Moreover, if the multilayer ceramic capacitor to be built into a multilayer printed wiring board has large differences in level between the surface of the ceramic body and the surfaces of the external electrodes, the gap between the surface of the multilayer printed wiring board and the mounting surface of the ceramic body is widened when the capacitor is built in the multilayer printed wiring board. Therefore, peeling is likely to be caused between the multilayer printed wiring board and the external electrodes, and there is also a problem of moisture ingress from the peeled sites, which results in degraded resistance to moisture.